Dentistry researchers receive funding to investigate pain

By Rachel Boutet
 
Assistant professor Massieh Moayedi is a recent recipient of the Government of Ontario’s Early Researcher Award, Round 16. Moayedi will use the grant for his research, “Exploring novel brain circuits in chronical painful temporomandibular disorders”. The grant funding includes $100,000 from Ontario in operating funds, matched with $50,000 from the Faculty as well as indirect support. 
 
Iacopo Cioffi, assistant professor at the Faculty and co-principal investigator of the study, also received $40,000 in funding from the American Association of Orthodontics Foundation. 
 
Chronic temporomandibular myalgia (mTMD) is a painful condition affecting the muscles of mastication (e.g. chewing). It is the most common cause of non-dental orofacial pain, and the second most frequent musculoskeletal (MSK) disorder that causes pain and disability. TMD affects one in six Ontarians, primarily women, and causes considerable personal suffering and costs due to healthcare costs and lost productivity.
 
This research will investigate a novel link between mTMD and recently discovered trigemino-amygdalar neural pathways. Building on Moayedi’s previous discovery of peripheral neural and muscular abnormalities that contribute to mTMD, this project will use neuroimaging to investigate the contributions of these pathways to orofacial pain in humans for the first time, potentially leading to novel targeted therapeutic strategies.
 
The study seeks to identify the neural underpinnings of awake bruxism—an oral behavior characterized by clenching of the teeth and/or bracing of the lower jaw—which is strongly associated with facial pain due to TMD. Moayedi and Cioffi have designed a functional MRI task and a jaw motor task which will allow them to identify and characterize, for the first time, a novel brain circuit involved in this behavior. Moayedi and Cioffi have complementary expertise in brain fMRI (Moayedi) and bruxism (Cioffi). Together, they will use a multimodal approach involving surface electromyography and fMRI to pursue their research aims. The study builds on some of their previous investigations about mood modulation and jaw motor responses. 
 
Read more about Moayedi and Cioffi’s pain research here: https://www.dentistry.utoronto.ca/news/finding-biomarkers-pain

Photo: Illustration showing temporomandibular disorder pain (Created by Ann Sanderson)